The
kid, just a teenager, trotted through the tunnel and into the Coliseum,
into the noise and presence of who knows how many thousand fans, the
moment rising sharply from inside out. All the way out.

"The
goosebumps you had," Mickey Flynn says, "all doubled at once."

About
the same time, another kid, another teenager, had a similar experience.
Similar in action, but a more poignant reaction, one that really illustrated
the phrase all the way out. Ron Russell wet his pants.

"Just
a little," he says. "But you don't have to put that in the paper."

Sorry,
Ron, after 50 years all truths must be told about a football game
that still sounds mythical.

Anaheim
High and Downey High were draped in a heavy fog the night of Dec.14,
1956. Five decades later, their 13-13 tie seems no less surreal.

"I'm
not sure any of us knew beforehand how big the game was," says Anaheim's
Flynn, now 68. "But we found out pretty quickly."

Says
Downey's Russell, also 68: "The story just built and built and built
that season. It was one of those fluke things, I guess. It was just
a dream game."

They
were playing for a CIF championship and for so much more. They were
playing for Anaheim and Downey at a time when high schools genuinely
represented towns because many towns had only one high school.

The
Colonists and Vikings entered 12-0, their paths seemingly destined
to cross again after scrimmaging one another in preseason. The results
of that practice game, naturally, were even, both teams scoring twice.

Football
was different back then, a fact made clear by newspaper reports noting
seven "forward passes" were attempted in the title game. The teams
- running identical "Tight-T" offenses, with three backs often lining
up within smelling distance of the quarterback - combined for 94 running
plays.

We
also were different back then. The Dodgers were in Brooklyn, the Lakers
in Minneapolis and the Angels in the Pacific Coast League. There were
no Raiders or Clippers and a trip out West in the NHL meant traveling
to Chicago.

The
Rams were here and having their worst season - 4-8 - since moving
to Los Angeles from Cleveland. USC and UCLA both had winning football
seasons in 1956, but bowl bids weren't passed out like M&Ms then.
The Trojans and Bruins were tucked away by mid-December.

So
officially, 41,383 attended this game, but literally no one ever can
be certain. The opening kickoff was pushed back twice because the
lines outside the Coliseum were so long.

At
one point, officials stopped bothering to hand out tickets at all
and simply collected money. The late Kenny Fagans, who was then CIF
commissioner, once said it took two days to count the cash, most of
which was wadded up in cardboard containers taken from a stadium snack
bar.

"There
were 60,000 there, at least," says former Register sports writer Carl
Sawyer, who attended the game as a USC student. "A bunch of people
knocked down a fence to get in."

Anaheim's
star was Flynn and its coach was Clare Van Hoorebeke, one of the county's
football legends. Downey was led by Randy Meadows and coached by Dick
Hill, who, more than 40 years later, would retire as the winningest
high school football coach in Orange County history.

Kids
would swarm Flynn for autographs after games and dress like him -
wearing blue and gold jerseys with No.25 - for Halloween.

Meadows
had set state scoring records and averaged 16 yards a carry. That
season, the two stars would share - of course, another tie - the CIF
player of the year award.

"Mickey
Flynn and Randy Meadows ... they sounded like characters at Disneyland,"
says Art Hansen, a Cal State Fullerton professor who is authoring
a book about the sporting and social climates locally in the '50s.
"There was a mythical, epic dimension to the players."

When
the game finally did kick off, that dimension only grew. Nine minutes
in, Flynn scored on a 62-yard run. Less than two minutes later, Meadows
went 69 yards for a touchdown.

Downey's
Jack Trumbo, however, missed the extra point - his only miss of the
season - and Anaheim led, 7-6, an edge that would last into the third
quarter.

Up
by a point, the Colonists were feeling better, if only slightly. The
night before the game, a local men's club honored the team with a
chicken dinner. Ten players were ill the next day, the bus ride to
the Coliseum featuring several examples of just how ill.

Still,
Anaheim extended its lead in the third quarter on a 1-yard run by
Flynn. But when John Baker's kick sailed low and wide, the score remained
13-6, setting up Downey and Russell. Three minutes into the final
quarter, he scored from a yard out.

Football,
remember, was different back then. There was no such thing as a two-point
conversion; you could only go for one, whether you kicked or ran a
play from scrimmage. Hill called for a pitch to Russell, who slid
smoothly outside to tie the score.

Both
teams had one more possession, the game concluding with Downey near
the 50-yard line - the standoff fittingly ending in the middle of
the field.

Under
CIF rules then, in the event of a tie, the team with more first downs
advanced in the playoffs. Since this was the final, it was determined
before kickoff that a tie would result in co-champions.

"I
think everybody thought the ending was great," Russell says, "except
for the players from both teams."

Flynn
finished with 134 yards on 17 carries, Meadows 112 yards on 10 carries.
The next summer, they would share the same backfield in an all-star
game at the Coliseum, a game that would attract 85,931.

That
would be the football peak for both as players. Flynn went on to play
at Long Beach City College. Meadows started at USC but didn't last
there long and never played varsity in college.

The
only player from the '56 title game who played professionally was
Anaheim tackle Marshall Shirk. After attending UCLA, he spent six
years in the CFL.

"It
seemed like when that game was over a weight was lifted off our shoulders,"
Flynn says. "Randy and I looked at each other and just said something
like, 'It's over.' We were so tired. We had been hearing all year
about how great we were."

Flynn
has spent time since in and around football and still serves on the
staff at Fullerton College. Life wasn't so kind to Meadows. He had
four failed marriages, became a heavy smoker and suffered a heart
attack before dying of cancer at age 62 in 2000.

Near
the end, he received a visit from Flynn, who brought a message:

"I
told him, 'Do you realize what you did for kids? There were kids all
over Southern California wearing your jersey and wanting to be you
on the sandlot.'"

A
couple times a month - still today - someone mentions Dec.14, 1956,
to Flynn. Just last week, at an Anaheim game, a fan asked him about
that night.